Injury or destruction of tissues should be understood as damage to an aggregation of specialized cells with a particular function both internally and externally in the body, such as different organs or parts of these, vessels, skin etc.
Tissue damage involves a complex series of events such as dilation of vessel walls e.g. arterioles, capillaries and venules, increased permeability of fluids including e.g. plasma proteins and increased blood flow. Increased vascular leakage often results in extravasation an oedema formation which characterize the damage of different tissues.
Often tissue damage is characterized by signs of pain, heat, redness, swelling and loss of function.
Tissue damage is not defined as a disease per se but is often a component in different diseases of both acute and chronic nature.
Damage of tissues can be induced in many ways. Inducing factors can be correlated with mechanical effects, immunological effects or chemical effects. Microorganisms such as virus, bacteria and fungus can induce tissue damage and exposure to heat, fire, radiation, cold and blows most often results in such damage. Many diseases like asthma, eczema, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes and arteriosclerosis also involve different types of tissue damage.
The existing treatment of diseases connected to tissue damage are based on drugs such as non steriod antiinflammatory drugs (NSAID), steriods, antibiotics and cytostatics. In some cases also surgical therapy is used.
Existing drugs often suffer from limited effectiveness in combination with serious side effects. Toxic effects appearing from the treatment with NSAID:s can consist of gastrointestinal side effects, allergic reactions and side effects in the central nervous system. Treatment with steriods often results in side effects such as osteoprosis and fractures, increased susceptibility to infections and peptic ulcerations.
From the U.S. Pat. No. 4,735,936 a pharmaceutical composition comprising as a pharmaceutically active ingredient at least one isomer of inositoltrisphosphate is known. In said patent the effect of this pharmaceutical composition is shown for different areas, such as cardiovascular diseases and arthritis.